Presidents Day

Yesterday was Presidents Day and since we hadn't done much by way of homeschooling for the past three weeks I decided that we would be working until lunch time or until Dakota got his work done.  Everything was focused on Washington and Lincoln.  There were books to read, a Mt. Rushmore craft using the presidents' heads on coins, silhouettes, School Express packets, probability math with pennies and some easy writing/word game pages.  We, as a family, get alot done and I know that if Dakota applied himself he could have that work done in 2 hours.  Three and a half hours later, he finally wrapped up most of it in between fits and spurts of crying and carrying on about how unfair life was because it was a holiday and his friends were off school.  I tried to talk to him about how his friends probably thought it was unfair that he got to play legos and watch movies alot over the past three weeks due to his dad's injury, but he just couldn't see it that way.  Of course, in his eight year old mind, that is completely true.

This morning we finished the Venn diagram and biopoem that we had yesterday and then went into the livingroom to do some of our work.  It was cold and damp outside and dreary inside...the kind of day when you just want to get under the blankets.  I had the idea to pull the two recliners together, snuggle under our blankets and do all our work in there.  I got all our books and papers together, gave Dakota a clip board and away we went.  I was very impressed at how smoothly things went!  We ended up getting our entire day's work done by 12:30, had lunch and then had time to watch Ice Age, a suggested extended activity for our Magic Tree House book, Sunset of the Sabertooths.  I don't know that "recliner school" is something we could do every day, but today, it sure was nice.  I can see a few more of them in our future before springtime has us heading out to the deck to enjoy the sunshine.